Joseph Edward Duncan

Idaho Crimes Against Children conference begins

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — Detectives, prosecutors, social workers and other officials are gathering in Boise this week for the annual Idaho Crimes Against Children Conference.

The conference runs Monday and Tuesday in Boise. FBI agent Don Robinson is one of the keynote speakers. He's performed a case study on the investigation of Joseph Edward Duncan III , who was convicted of kidnapping, raping, torturing and killing a Coeur d'Alene boy in 2005 and beating to death the boy's older brother, mother and her fiance.

Organizers say the goal of the conference is to provide instruction, strategies, and other information to law enforcement workers and other professionals on protecting child victims and prosecuting offenders.

EVIL BEINGS: JOSEPH EDWARD DUNCAN III

Duncan took them in a stolen 2000 Red Cherokee jeep with Missouri license plates to a very remote campsite in the Lolo National Forest  and kept them there for a few weeks, having sex with both of them and torturing Dylan. He made a video of the crimes and the video was shown to jurors and those in the courtroom. He raped Shasta and forced Shasta and Dylan to perform sex acts on each other. She said Dylan screamed when he woke up because he thought he had been in heaven. He then offered the half-dead Dylan an opportunity to watch his “death” by hanging on tape. A little while later, he forced Shasta to drag the half dead Dyllan through the campfire with a rope around his neck, burning him horribly. Then Duncan “accidentally” shot Dylan in the stomach with a shotgun. “The devil is here, boy, the devil himself. The demon couldn’t do what the devil sent him to do so the devil came himself,” Duncan yells in one of the videos. “The devil likes to watch children suffer and cry.” Duncan cracks sick jokes through the videos. In one video, Duncan jokes, “They kidnapped me – they won’t let me leave.” Later, on July 2, 2005, Duncan went back to a Denny’s restaurant with Shasta in Coeur D’Alene, Idaho, where she was immediately spotted by a resident, who went in and told the manager, who wisely called 9-11. It was 1:30 AM and the cops pulled in with their lights off. Duncan saw the cops and took Shasta into the bathroom with him. He came out later and the police quickly surrounded the table and asked him to come outside. Joseph Edward Duncan was born, one of five in a military family, in Fort Bragg, Virginia, in 1963. His parents soon moved to Tacoma, Washington, where he grew up. He was described as lonely and displaced in high school, especially after his parents’ divorce in 1979. He soon dropped out of high school. He engaged in sex at age 8 with two of his sisters. They apparently initiated it. What this had to do with his later offenses, I have no idea. Apparently soon afterwards, 9-year old Carmen Cubias and her 11-year old half sister, Sammiejo White, went missing from the motel where they were staying with their homeless family. A while before, Duncan was living only three blocks away from the motel where they vanished. These girls later turned up dead, and Duncan is a prime suspect, though he will probably never be charged.

Milton's Earthly Paradise, A Historical Study of Eden

People Convicted of Murder by Idaho, Joseph E. Duncan III

On Monsters, An Unnatural History of Our Worst Fears

Stolen in the Night, The True Story of a Family's Murder, a Kidnapping and the Child Who Survived

Criminal Investigation